Landings Continued....

A month !! That's how long its been since my last flight. Probably a bit more. Riding on the bus on my way to the flight school, I was thinking about this and was sure that I would have forgotten a lot of stuff and would be all over the place. So I tried going over all the procedures involved in landing over in my head. For some reason there was an awful lot of traffic on the way and as a result the bus got delayed, but I got my time to go over the procedures.

Once at the airport it was time to preflight. As we approach winter the days are getting shorter and the clouds in the sky didn't help the situation much. As I walked towards the Cessna, a cool breeze was setting in. Approaching the aircraft memories passed by and I remembered the procedures I needed to follow. This gave me some comfort. I had promised myself to keep my cool and was glad it was helping me out. While doing the preflight I didn't have to refer to the printed checklist a lot. I was occassionally cross checking to let the good habit settle in, but I remembered it all at the back of my head. With the preflight done and engine started, it was time to taxi. So far so good.

I started taxiing trying to keep the aircraft centered on the yellow line. Must say I surpassed my expecatations. I guess the calm winds also helped out. Did the engine run up and as we got our clearance to take off, the tower adviced us that there was another cessna turning final. So it was time to get things going fast. The take off roll was smooth and lift off was at about 65 knots.

I wasn't as aggresive on the rudders and that's definitely an area I need to work on. But otherwise things went pretty smooth and had a nice approach. On landing I flared at the right time and had a decent landing, but for some reason I started applying forward pressure on the elevator rather than aft. Bad bad, never do it !!!

Touch and go and up we go. All in all we had 15 landings today which included touch and gos, go arounds, forward slip to land and short approaches. Forward slips are the most fun. When my instructor demonstrated it to me, I was like "what the....???". The aircraft just plummets down. Next time around, it was my time to perform it. Not bad for first time. I do need to get a hang of keeping the plane on the extended centerline. A little less aileron and the plane starts drifting off.

But all in all, it was a great flying experience today. So much to learn and oh so fun :) Even my instructor was surprised that I had not flown for a month and still didn't forget a lot. The next time around we'll go an review all that we have done till now and hopefully soon he'll be comfortable with me soloing. So let's keep fingers crossed. :)

Next flight is wed night. So till then blue skies.

Dual flight time: 1.3 hrs